Welcome to Sura, dressed to counsel a Bangkok Chinatown evening market, in accordance with its chef, Billy Thammasathiti. He co-owns the younger restaurant together with his mom, Penny, and his brother, Andy, the talent behind the drinks right here. The title of the household affair has a double which means: “solar” in Sanskrit and “spirits,” as in alcohol, in Thai, says Billy, 29. His aunt, Satang Ruangsangwatana, is a marketing consultant on the undertaking and the explanation for my preliminary go to. Ruangsangwatana was a co-chef at foodie favourite Fat Nomads, a Thai supper membership she staged in her house in Wheaton, Md., till final fall. Billy hosted there earlier than launching Sura in Could.
Don’t come on the lookout for fish muffins or tom yum soup. Sura shouldn’t be a Thai traditionalist. Billy Thammasathiti involves the restaurant from Azumi, a Japanese institution in Baltimore, and likes to name his enterprise an izakaya, or Japanese pub. Born in Springfield, Va., he spent summers studying to prepare dinner from his grandmother in Bangkok, and he says his household is “Thai-Chinese language by blood.”
An order of skewered beef reveals how the chef makes some Thai fundamentals his personal. A riff on crying tiger beef, the ropy meat is marinated in fish sauce, palm sugar and salt and sprinkled with what Billy calls “rice spice” — roasted sticky rice, lemongrass, lime leaves — earlier than hitting the grill. The textures and aromatics are riveting.
Different dishes let Thammasathiti remind you the place he’s cooked earlier than. The chef shows uncooked black tiger shrimp, garnished with crackling tobiko, in a pool of sauce made inexperienced with chiles and cilantro and sassy with lime juice and garlic. The supple shrimp slip over the tongue like slick noodles; the hearth within the sauce stays with you at the same time as you progress on to different dishes.
As in an izakaya, dishes aren’t designated as appetizers or entrees, and the meals comes out because it’s prepared.
Thammasathiti should have had his brother’s craft in thoughts when he proposed “chips & dip.” Ethereal, garlic-scented rice crackers and a little bit dish of floor pork and roasted peanuts souped up with coconut milk are the proper companion to certainly one of Andy’s drinks. The opposite apparent bar snacks are quail eggs fried inside bow tie-shaped wontons, dappled with sweet-sour chile-garlic sauce and served with a pinch of pickled cabbage and carrot. Munch, munch, gone, identical to the bean curd pores and skin rolls. They’re sliced to disclose springy facilities of floor pork, shrimp and water chestnuts, and enhanced by a dunk in what seems to be like honey however seems to be salted plum caramel.
The drinks show as spirited because the cooking. The signature libations affix Asian accents to the classics. Therefore the fervour fruit liqueur within the refreshing daiquiri, and baijiu, a potent Chinese language spirit, in a pleasantly medicinal Manhattan made with mezcal and fernet. The latter goes by the title Yaowarat and pays homage to Bangkok’s Chinatown, the place Andy’s father is from. One more crowd-pleaser marries a cosmopolitan with a caipirinha. Ask for the raspberry-colored Cosmorinha.
The chef likes to play with hearth, evinced by pork stomach simmered in fish sauce earlier than it’s fried. The seductive dish, lavished with colourful bell peppers and heaped on steamed rice, is completed with a chile sauce that races from sizzling to tangy and again, a sensation (considerably) tamed by considerable Thai basil within the jumble. Then there’s the Chinatown-inspired rooster with cashews, smoky from the wok, which additionally singes the onions and ginkgo nuts within the meeting. The predominate reminiscence of the dish is the peppery wake left in your mouth. Thanks, dried Chinese language chiles. Crisp chopped duck prompts sweat on the forehead with hits of the identical, plus lime juice, shallots and a jungle of contemporary herbs that make you’re feeling extra alive than earlier than you tucked into the dish.
A web page of meatless dishes expands the viewers for Sura. Exact blocks of fried tofu draw eyes to the golden stack, strewn with crackly bits of fried ginger and garlic and herbs together with cilantro. Pluck a dice, smooth as a marshmallow inside, from the pile, dip it into the accompanying inexperienced sauce and … instantly go for some sticky rice to soak up the electrical warmth. (If the shock is acquainted, you most likely sampled the shrimp crudo, which sports activities the identical inexperienced cloak.)
Permit me to winnow your dinner decisions by steering you away from the pad thai, which suffers from the frequent downside with the favored noodle dish on this nation: a heavy hand with (palm) sugar.
The genial attendants are adept at making strategies. For those who present even informal curiosity in no matter’s in your cocktail glass, certainly one of them is apt to carry over the spirit that provides the drink its carry. My solely want is that the meals come out at a extra leisurely tempo, not inside nanoseconds of ordering. The tables aren’t sufficiently big to accommodate all of Sura’s goodness, obliging friends to clear house for incoming site visitors.
The setting isn’t for everybody, both. The steep stairs show a problem for some diners, the lighting requires you to make use of your votive as a flashlight to learn the menu, and the onerous surfaces imply repeating your self within the din. Nonetheless, the household has performed a pleasant job of constructing the basement really feel larger than it’s with well-placed mirrors and islands of tall tables to interrupt up the house. Probably the most snug time to go to is the hour or so after the restaurant opens. (For the document, the adventurous nonagenarian I took on certainly one of my three excursions had a blast at Sura — actually, when my mother sweated over the aforementioned cashew rooster torched with dried chiles.)
Some candy information got here to mild after I phoned Billy Thammasathiti after my final go to. For one factor, his aunt plans to revive her supper membership at Sura. Fats Nomads might pop up but this month.
For an additional, “it was a shock we bought this location,” the chef mentioned of the house that after housed the favored Sala Thai — the restaurant his grandmother cooked at when she got here to the USA from Thailand within the 1990s. “You could possibly say it was religion.”
Or destiny. No matter. Sura is doing one thing totally different with Thai, and it’s one thing particular.
2016 P St. NW. 202-450-6282. suradc.com. Open: Indoor eating and takeout (with a separate menu) four to 9:30 p.m. Sunday via Monday and Wednesday via Thursday, four to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Costs: Dishes to share $eight to $18. Sound test: 80 decibels/Extraordinarily loud. Accessibility: The steep stairs and cushty eating room make the restaurant inaccessible to wheelchair customers. Pandemic protocols: Employees is vaccinated; masks are optionally available.
